New Jersey Gazette, First Trenton Issue

The inaugural edition of the New-Jersey Gazette, the state's first newspaper, was published by Isaac Collins in December 1777 in Burlington, New Jersey. In the spring of 1778 Collins moved his printing office to the southeast corner of Queen and Second (Broad and State) Streets in the heart of Trenton, where the Gazette, except for a brief period in 1783, continued to be published weekly until 1786. Endorsed by Governor William Livingston and subsidized by the state legislature, the newspaper was a strong supporter of the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War. Livingston himself published numerous patriotic, some might say vitriolic, essays in the Gazette under the noms de plume "Hortentius" and "Scipio." The main supplier of paper in these years was the paper mill of Stacy Potts, located at the mouth of the Assunpink Creek (on the site of today's Marriott Hotel).

[credit: reproduction in A History of Trenton, 1679-1929]